Realization of resistive switching and magnetoresistance in ZnO/ZnO-Co composite materials

Combining resistive switching and magnetoresistance in a system exhibits great potential for application in multibit nonvolatile data storage. It is in significance and difficulty to seek a material with resistances that can be stably switched at different resistance states modulated by an electrical field and a magnetic field. In this paper, we propose a novel electrode/ZnO/ZnO-Co/electrode device in which the storage layer combines a nanostructured ZnO-Co layer and a ZnO layer. The device exhibits bipolar resistive switching characteristics, which can be explained by the accumulation of oxygen vacancies due to the migration of oxygen ions by external electrical stimuli and the contribution of Co particles in the ZnO-Co layer. Moreover, the magnetoresistance effect at room temperature can be observed in the device at high and low resistance states. Therefore, through electrical and magnetic control, four resistance states are achieved in this system, presenting a new possibility towards enhancing data densities by many folds.